Killing Machine (26 page)

The air force and navy still commanded a large number of drone raids, probably the greater number. Drone central was Creech Air
Force Base, located outside Las Vegas. Sitting in a central control room, drone pilots dressed in flight suits were the new top guns in robot warfare. From the digital feeds on the bright screens before them that reproduced the “battle zones,” the operators could unleash a Hellfire missile on a target half a world away. There were more than sixty satellite bases that housed the drones, with the overseas bases currently concentrated around the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. And they were expanding into new locations at a fast pace. “We are constantly evaluating potential operating locations based on evolving mission needs.” The Department of Defense had plans to purchase about 730 new medium-sized and large drones over the next decade. Drones were the bedrock of new military planning.
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The CIA mother base was Langley. From CIA headquarters CIA “pilots” ran their missions, and analysts watched footage of Osama bin Laden’s compound sent back by the RQ-170 Sentinel, nick-named the “Beast of Kandahar.” While all this expansion was plainly evident even to casual observers of national security policy, Obama’s chief counterterrorism aide, John Brennan, described al Qaeda as on a steady slide downward. In a newspaper interview he described the recent death of an al Qaeda leader in the tribal area of Pakistan as a “huge blow.” This particular leader, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, was “reportedly” hit by a CIA drone strike. Al Qaeda was now too busy trying to hide, Brennan asserted, to plot new attacks. And this attack also showed why, he went on, U.S. intelligence had detected no attacks planned for the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
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So while al Qaeda was on the ropes, the mission creep of drone warfare was far more ambitious and growing more rapidly than anything seen previously—and certainly more extensive than any boots-on-the-ground wars in the Middle East and Africa. In September 2011, for example, the United States blamed the Pakistani intelligence service for supporting a new outrage by the Haqqani network operating in Afghanistan, a deadly bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul. The chair of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, made an explicit accusation before the Senate Armed Services Committee: “The Haqqani network acts as a veritable arm
of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.” Washington apparently threatened to send troops into Pakistan to chase down the Haqqanis—a practice of intruding into other sovereign states that began even before 1916 when Woodrow Wilson sent General John J. Pershing into Mexico to try to end Pancho Villa’s raids into Texas. Pershing didn’t find Villa, and Mexico City did not welcome the mission.
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Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s interior minister, held a similar opinion about such an incursion. “The Pakistan nation will not allow the boots on our ground, never,” he said. “Our government is already cooperating with the U.S.—but they also must respect our sovereignty.” Despite these crosscurrents and bitter exchanges, and Mullen’s statements to the committee that the Pakistanis had only undermined their international credibility, Mullen concluded his testimony by saying that he had not wasted his time putting so much effort into cooperation with Islamabad: “Military cooperation again is warming.”
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Mullen’s optimism rested on drone missions, for they were the only area where it appeared Islamabad’s interests and Washington’s concerns came together. As matters would develop, it would be even clearer in places such as Yemen that drones could be welcomed, as al Qaeda became intertwined with opposition movements there. Drones appeared to be the answer to the problem of maintaining American world leadership without bankrupting the nation in the process or forcing to the surface nationalist anger that would undermine the American presence—both devilish issues that had sent previous “whole-world” empires careening to a rapid collapse.
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The troubles in the Arab world that threatened chaos after Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was overthrown now appeared to Brennan to be only a “bump in the road,” as military cooperation was soon reestablished with Egypt’s armed forces. Counterterrorism cooperation with Tunisia (where the so-called Arab Spring had begun) had also been good. But there was one place where the situation had become acute: Yemen. Yemeni forces were battling a serious challenge from the bin Laden affiliate al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula, which has “worked with the rebel tribes to grab large swaths of territory in the south.” American efforts had been hampered in part by the unpopularity of President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime. His sons were running the government while Saleh recovered in Saudi Arabia from an assassin’s attack that left him with burns over 70 percent of his body. Brennan hoped he would not return, but instead stay away so that real elections could take place. The problem was that “the political tumult” made it appear that the government was positioning itself for “internal political purposes as opposed to doing all they can against AQAP,” Brennan told reporters in a wide-ranging and revealing interview. “I’ve told him that I do not believe it’s in his interests, Yemen’s interests or our interests . . . to go back to Yemen.”
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Yemen was a “tinderbox,” he ended, that could erupt into a civil war that AQAP would take advantage of to gain power. What American policy makers needed was someone to attack in the country whose anti-Americanism was so virulent that a drone strike would not appear to be interference in the domestic politics of Yemen. Fortunately, one was at hand: Anwar al-Awlaki.

The Constitution and the Preacher

Anwar al-Awlaki was then a Yemeni preacher with many followers globally. He was born to Yemeni parents in New Mexico, where his father was studying agricultural economics and business administration. That made him a native-born American citizen—a big complication when the time came to debate whether to target him for terrorist acts. The Constitution requires due process for citizens accused of capital crimes under the Fifth Amendment, without which they cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property; and Article 3 of the Constitution defines treason as a specific overt act, namely, “levying War against [the United States], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” This article also requires that conviction for such an act must depend upon two witnesses in open court or a confession of treason. While the language about what actually constitutes an overt act of treason is somewhat
slippery, the requirement under the Fifth Amendment seems air-tight: there must be a judgment in open court to convict.

Born in 1971, Awlaki grew up in the United States and as a young adult lived in Colorado and San Diego. In many ways he was an unusual person to claim to be a spiritual leader, as he did when he moved with his wife and son to Virginia, where he became an imam at an Islamic center in Falls Church, as he had been busted twice in San Diego for soliciting prostitutes. Even before the move to Virginia he had become a “person of interest” in a variety of FBI investigations into possible connections with various suspected terrorists and radical jihadist-oriented organizations. Eventually the FBI closed out its preliminary investigations, saying that “the imam . . . does not meet the criterion for [further] investigation.” He then became for a time the Muslim chaplain at George Washington University.
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After 9/11 he began preaching against the United States, but he turned up at the Capitol to lead an invited service and even at the Pentagon, where he became part of an “outreach” effort by the military. His phone number was found in the room of one of the 9/11 hijackers in Germany, and it is said that one of the hijackers visited his mosque. Awlaki denied any knowledge of the plot but expressed sympathy for the Taliban. Once again he was arrested for transporting a prostitute from Washington to Virginia, but no attempt was made to prosecute him. After a time in England, Awlaki moved to Yemen. He was imprisoned there in 2006 for eighteen months, apparently at U.S. request, and interrogated by the FBI once again in search of a connection with 9/11. But the Yemeni government insisted it was not because of suspected al Qaeda links or activities, but rather on kidnapping charges and other crimes.

In a taped interview shown in Great Britain, Awlaki claimed that he did not know for certain what the interrogations had been about, and added that he would like to travel outside Yemen but would not do so “until the U.S. drops whatever unknown charges it has against me.” He had built up quite a reputation in England as an inspirational speaker, one of a very few respected radical clerics who could write and speak in English. And this talent he used to
the fullest. “America is in a war with Allah,” he said in one YouTube lecture, referring to the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. All Muslims would have to choose—President Bush or the mujahideen. The solution for the Muslim world, he said, “is jihad.”
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The language, of course, was a play on President Bush’s famous declaration after 9/11 that other nations were either for or against the United States—there was no middle ground. In November 2001, for example, Bush said after a meeting with French leaders, “Over time it’s going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity. You’re either with us or against us in the fight against terror.” Awlaki was becoming something of a celebrity in certain circles for his ability to turn American claims around, and for his supposed ability to inspire—and perhaps actively recruit—people to carry out terrorist missions. In February 2008 there was a deliberate leak to the
Washington Post
about the cleric’s threat. “There is good reason,” asserted the usual anonymous official, “to believe Anwar Aulaqi has been involved in very serious terrorist activities since leaving the United States, including plotting attacks against America and our allies.”
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Obama took over the Awlaki hunt and the tricky diplomacy that went with it. Awlaki gave him plenty of reasons to be upset, issuing an almost constant stream of taunts and forecasts of dire consequences for Americans who supported Israel and waged war in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I pray that Allah destroys America and all its allies and the day that happens,” he asserted in February 2009, “and I assure you it will and sooner than you think, I will be very pleased.” With this rhetoric he attracted Muslims in other countries—and, most astonishingly, even the U.S. Army.

Major Nidal Hasan, an army psychiatrist who would kill thirteen soldiers and wound thirty-two others at Fort Hood in Texas in November 2009, had asked Awlaki what his duty was as a Muslim. Would he be considered a martyr if he took lives? Hasan had initiated a mostly one-sided e-mail exchange—indeed, he wrote seven e-mails to Awlaki before he got any response, and in none of them did he reveal what he might be planning. The later e-mails had to do with questions of charity and finding a “proper” woman, a kind
of request almost like one would write to a dating bureau. By this time, of course, the FBI was tracking Awlaki’s e-mail. One agent commented:

While e-mail contact with [Awlaki] does not necessarily indicate participation in terrorist-related matters, [Awlaki’s] reputation, background and anti-U.S. sentiments are well known. Although the content of these messages was not overtly nefarious, this type of contact with [Awlaki] would be of concern if the writer is actually the individual identified above.
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To put it differently, Awlaki was responsible for producing dangerous threats, even if he did not initiate them directly. “Nidal Hasan did the right thing,” Awlaki wrote on his website. Muslims could only justify serving in the U.S. military by eventually following “in the footsteps of men like Nidal.” “Nidal Hasan is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people,” Awlaki wrote. This was exactly how turncoat killers were made, said American investigators. As a former FBI agent put it to ABC News: “Awlaki is known as a senior recruiter for al Qaeda. He would be the spiritual motivator. Almost like someone you would go to and say, ‘this is what I’m thinking about doing.’ And they join in and encourage you and basically help you rationalize your behavior.”
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Awlaki’s extravagant praise of Hasan’s act as the precursor of many more attacks to come set policy makers’ teeth on edge. And little wonder: it was like the fear of brainwashing in the Korean War, with a Stephen King twist about how it could be done from a distance of thousands of miles. A month after the attack, Awlaki told an interviewer:

I did not recruit Nidal Hasan to this operation; the one who recruited him was America, with its crimes and injustice, and this is what America refuses to admit. America does not want to admit that what Nidal did, and what thousands of other Muslims do
against America, is because of its unjust policies against the Islamic world. Nidal Hasan is a Muslim before he is an American, and he is also from Palestine, and he sees the oppression of the Jewish oppression of his people under American cover and support. True, I may have a role in his intellectual direction, but nothing beyond that, and I am not trying to absolve myself of what he did because I do not support it. No, but because I wish I had had the honor of having a bigger role in what happened than the role I really had.
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Awlaki was doubly dangerous because of the clever way he absolved himself of initiating actual acts of violence while advocating that others emulate Nidal Hasan until America was driven out of the Middle East. In a lengthy
New York Times
review of how President Obama’s embrace of drone warfare evolved as the 2012 presidential campaign began to heat up, the controversial case of Anwar al-Awlaki received special attention. Obama’s first national security adviser, General James Jones, told
Times
reporters that the president “was very interested in obviously trying to understand how a guy like Awlaki developed.” His fiery sermons “had helped inspire a dozen plots, including the shootings at Fort Hood.” The precise number given is of some interest because Nidal Hasan’s thoughts led
him
to contact Awlaki, not the other way around. There were plenty of fiery sermons out there, or at least plenty of websites and other sources of inflammatory anti-American rhetoric. The word
plots
is also a less than precise description of the Fort Hood outrage, because no one contended Hasan acted under orders from anyone.
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